TRANSPORT Secretary Chris Grayling should have £2,400 docked from his wages over the East Coast Main Line fiasco that led to the government again having to rescue the rail route’s principal franchise, Labour said yesterday.

MPs voted on whether to cut Mr Grayling’s salary by the cost of a season ticket to London from his Epsom and Ewell constituency after shadow transport secretary Andy McDonald moved a Commons motion to that effect. It was defeated by 304 votes to 271.

During the debate, Mr McDonald said Mr Grayling had “fallen desperately short” in his handling of the agreement between the Department for Transport (DfT) and Virgin Trains East Coast (VTEC).

Mr Grayling announced last week that the DfT would take control of the franchise from June 24 after it emerged that VTEC had “got their bid wrong” and could no longer operate the service.

In a scathing attack, Mr McDonald accused Mr Grayling of being “asleep at the wheel” when Stagecoach repeatedly warned DfT that it would fail to meet its revenue targets weeks after taking over the InterCity East Coast franchise in March 2015.

He added that Mr Grayling is “incapable of being direct with Members of Parliament and the public alike,” describing his approach as “smoke, mirrors, ambiguities, jargon, technicalities, empty aspirations and discourtesy.”

VTEC is the third private operator to fail to complete the full length of a contract to run the franchise.

Great North Eastern Railway was kicked off the route in 2007 after its parent company suffered financial difficulties, while National Express withdrew in 2009.

Services were then renationalised and run by the DfT for six years until VTEC took over in 2015.

Mr McDonald welcomed the move to bring InterCity East Coast back under DfT control, telling MPs that the franchising model is “totally broken, it’s finished, it’s a dead parrot, it is no more.”

Mr Grayling dismissed Labour’s motion as “a lot of incoherence.” He later reiterated that he did not intend public control to become permanent.

Labour MP Chi Onwurah, who represents Newcastle upon Tyne Central, said: “The Conservatives are ideologically constipated on free markets to the extent that they cannot see the reality of our rail network and what it needs.”

Her party colleague Paula Sherriff, MP for Dewsbury, joked: “I’m quite worried that, if we continue to say to the Secretary of State that we’ll cut his pay if he continues some of the incompetencies, that he will actually turn out to be on less than the minimum wage.”